Chris Christie

* The Gorsuch hearings are set for March 20th. Now what should senators ask him? [National Law Journal]

* Seriously, what should senators ask him? [SCOTUSBlog]

* The CFPB is getting battered and bruised, but the D.C. Circuit may give it a fighting chance. [Law.com]

* Pepper Hamilton had a high profile year working the Baylor matter, but PPP is down 28 percent. They lose any more and they’ll have to change their name to Peper Hamilton. [Legal Intelligencer]

* Alston & Bird, meanwhile, saw a revenue boost. [Daily Report]

* Judge finds probable cause in criminal complaint against Chris Christie. Don’t worry, New Jersey prosecutors are too scared of traffic problems in their towns to do anything about it. [Law360]

* Florida has been busy. First the Docs v. Glocks ruling and now an abortion ruling. [Orlando Sentinel]

* My God. They can’t even pass background checks. [Politico]

* The top 10 law novels of the last 10 years. I wonder if She-Hulk made the list? (Spoiler: she does.) [ABA Journal]

* The University of Houston Law Center and the South Texas College of Law Houston (formerly known as the Houston College of Law and the South Texas College of Law) still haven’t been able to resolve their trademark tiff. A judge has encouraged both law schools to “keep at it” to avoid a trial. [Houston Chronicle]

* Earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed the Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017, a bill ending Chevron deference — perhaps the most important principal of administrative law. Apparently it will be much better for job creation and economic growth if judges ignore regulatory agencies’ legal interpretations. [Law360 (sub. req.)]

* Leslie Caldwell, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, will be stepping down from her post today. She has no idea what’s ahead of her aside from a trip to the Caribbean next week. As far as her prospective successor is concerned, she thinks accessing data on encrypted devices will be “problem No. 1 to address.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* A New Jersey judge has refused to dismiss a gubernatorial candidate’s criminal complaint against Governor Chris Christie over the Bridgegate scandal, noting that a lower court judge “improperly denied counsel [to Christie] at a critical stage” of the case. If probable cause is found, Christie may face charges, just like his colleagues. [Reuters]

* “Even if we could justify the need … it is far from clear that the funding case could be made….” Given the turmoil at Charlotte Law, people are wondering whether it would be a good idea for UNC Charlotte to open a law school. Just because one law school may be closing, it doesn’t mean that another needs to open in its place. [Charlotte Observer]

* I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened. [The Atlantic]

* I’m dreaming of a white… genocide? No, that’s not how that song goes. That’s not how that song goes, even in my house. [Simple Justice]

* The battle between Tata Sons and its former chairman, Cyrus Mistry, is probably the biggest corporate law story that you don’t care about. [New Indian Express]

* Chris Christie has been totally abandoned. [New York Times]

* Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is probably more likely to be eaten by reindeer than have his job by this time next year. [Wall Street Journal]

* Parole judge charged with assault for slugging a public defender. Do you even need a joke here? [New York Daily News]

* “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign.” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump plans to sue all of the “liars” who have accused him of sexual assault within the last two weeks when the election is over. As an attorney representing one of Trump’s accusers noted, a lawsuit would provide a “field day” to depose him under oath. [CNN]

* The American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has approved a tougher bar-passage rate standard that would require 75 percent of of a law school’s graduates who sit for the bar exam to pass it within two years. It’s up to the ABA House of Delegates to decide if the stricter standard will ever be implemented. We’ll have more on this later today. [ABA Journal]

* “I don’t know why he would wait around for 200 days and then pull out at the very moment that it seemed likely that he was going to get confirmed.” Will Judge Merrick Garland be confirmed to SCOTUS? With senators calling for lame-duck hearings if Hillary Clinton is elected and a bare-bones oral arguments calendar scheduled, it seems like even the justices are holding out hope for a full house in 2017. [Washington Post]

* In a deal likely to invoke government scrutiny, AT&T has agreed to purchase Time Warner for $84.5 billion. Teams from Sullivan & Cromwell (transaction work) and Arnold & Porter (regulatory work) will be representing AT&T, while Cravath will be representing Time Warner. Faiza Saeed, Cravath’s deputy presiding partner, will lead the team working on the deal from her firm. [DealBook / New York Times; Am Law Daily]

* According to testimony from Bridget Kelly, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Christie allegedly knew about the Bridgegate lane closures a month before they occurred, not afterwards, as he’s repeatedly claimed. Kelly, who says she thought the lane closures were for a traffic study, not a politically motivated scheme, is currently being tried in federal court over her role in the 2013 scandal. [Reuters]

* Workplace safety — especially when it deals with beloved actor Harrison Ford — is no laughing matter. And a Disney subsidiary is paying ~$2 million as a result. [io9]

* A look at the oral argument in Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado. [Slate]

* This whole “publicly traded company” thing isn’t working out so great for Slater & Gordon. [Law and More]

* A new summons for Governor Chris Christie over Bridgegate. [Huffington Post]

* Despite SCOTUS ruling, there haven’t been many Hobby Lobby copycats. [Politico]

* Copyright suit over the classic “Who’s On First” routine stays dead. [Hollywood Reporter]

* “Could a firm with a different business model suffer, potentially, if they don’t match the $180,000? Maybe.” Law firms may be competing for fewer students than in years prior thanks to decreased law school enrollment, but Biglaw’s new starting salary scale doesn’t seem to have made a big impact on the summer associate applicant pool — at most schools, OCI participation has held steady or risen only slightly since last year. [Law.com]

* “Are you listening? He just flat out lied. … [I]t could be bad.” In a text message that was included in a federal court filing earlier this week, a former aide to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie claimed that the governor lied when he told the media none of his staff knew about a plan to block George Washington Bridge traffic. Uh-oh! [New York Times]

* “We’ll tell the council that there’s a giant need for affordable law schools like us, and we’re going to meet that need.” After learning it was unlikely his school would receive accreditation due to students’ poor qualifications, Dean Royal Furgeson Jr. of UNT Dallas Law shrugged it off, saying the school would “get a fair hearing.” [ABA Journal]

* Robert Schulman, a former partner at Hunton & Williams, has been indicted for allegedly trading on insider information ahead of Pfizer’s $3.6 billion purchase of King Pharmaceuticals, a client he represented in 2010 while at the firm. He, along with his investment adviser, will face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. [Big Law Business]

* Yet another Biglaw firm has partnered with a financial company to assist its attorneys with their law school debt. Miller Canfield is working with Social Finance (SoFi) to provide loan refinancing options to the firm’s associates to help “ease the financial burden” of their heavy six-figure debt loads. [Grand Rapids Business Journal]

* “They’re being terribly exploited.” Lichten and Bright, a New York labor law firm, has contacted hundreds of UFC fighters in an effort to unionize them and help get them benefits that other sports unions share, like health insurance, pensions, and the ability to negotiate the terms of their contracts with the mixed martial arts giant. [MMA Junkie]

* Despite some big-ticket cases, the Supreme Court still leans right. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* The Kafka-esque treatment of a mentally ill rape victim, who was locked up over the Christmas holiday to make sure she’d testify, will infuriate you. [Mimesis Law]

* Cory Booker is still in the VP race, and he’s pissed about what he sees at the RNC: “It’s as if truth means nothing,” and the GOP is a “counter-factual party.” [Washington Post]

* Chris Christie “turned over his political testicles long ago.” Sounds about right. [Huffington Post]

* Is Ted Cruz’s political snub better than a legal remedy? [Law and More]

* Should India consider taking up Russia’s offer to build a nuclear aircraft carrier? [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

* So, you lucky associate you, expect a bit of extra cash this summer? Here’s how you should be spending it. [American Lawyer]

* Chris Christie allegedly took document preservation tips from Dick Nixon. [WNYC]

* DLA Piper looks to join the ranks of employing droids, announcing a new partnership with Kira Systems to produce an AI tool for conducting due diligence. [DLA Piper]

* Oh, the stupid things law schools do. Like how a bunch of Touro 3Ls are ineligible to sit for the bar exam this summer… [Reboot Your Law Practice]

* Bands from Google Legal, Kirkland & Ellis, Lieff Cabraser, Simpson Thacher, Kazan Law, and Morgan Lewis are competing in a Battle of the Bands at 1015 Folsom nightclub tomorrow night in San Francisco in support of The Family Violence Appellate Project. [Family Violence Appellate Project]

* M&A is having a pretty good 2016. [Fortune]

* “The Scrooge Effect” for Biglaw firms that refuse to give pay raises to their associates. [Law and More]

* The previously lost Marx Brothers musical, “I’ll Say She Is,” is currently playing at the Connelly Theater in the East Village. And it stars, Kathy Biehl a practicing New Jersey and Texas lawyer. [I’ll Say She Is]

* TRUCE! In the wake of his settlement with Paul Cassell, Alan Dershowitz looks to make peace with David Boies after a vicious fight. [Big Law Business]

* Speaking of making peace, Chris Christie has made a deal with New Jersey Democrats to end a six-year stalemate over the state Supreme Court. He is nominating Bridget Kelly’s old lawyer, Walter Timpone. [New Jersey.com]

* More analysis of bar exam results: see what happened in Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, Tennessee, and Kentucky. [Bar Exam Stats]

* Is it ethically acceptable — and does it work — to shame prosecutors for wrongful convictions? [Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics via Slate]

* Yes, that’s billions with a B: Goldman Sachs to pay $5 billion in settlements over charges it contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. [Gawker]

* Kevin Abikoff, partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, cleared Unaoil in an anti-corruption report, and is now facing questions about that representation. [Huffington Post]

* “I’d hope they’d see reason but I wouldn’t bet the family farm on it.” Senate Republicans may be stomping their feet about confirming one of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, but it may behoove them to do it now before Hillary Clinton takes office with a Democrat-controlled Senate. [Common Sense / New York Times]

* Sincere congratulations to Damaris Hernández, who recently achieved a seemingly impossible feat at her Bigfirm. The 36-year-old attorney is the first Latina to become a partner at Cravath Swaine & Moore. She joins the 46 other Hispanic women who are partners at just a few of America’s largest law firms. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Lawmakers from the Garden State have demanded that Gibson Dunn and digital forensics firm Stroz Friedberg repay $2.8 million in legal fees in the Bridgegate case, the bulk of which were e-discovery charges to the tune of $2.3 million. Welcome to the absurdity that is document review, New Jersey! [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* It looks like Apple isn’t the only tech company that’s dueling with the DOJ right now. Since “[t]he interest in secrecy does not last forever,” Twitter is mounting a First Amendment case against the Feds over its ability to publicly release data that allegedly contains details related to the government’s terrorism investigations. [WSJ Law Blog]

* The 10 customers who filed a class-action lawsuit against Subway over the sub shop’s less-than foot-long footlong sandwiches will only be able to afford 100 $5 footlongs each, because the lawyers on the case are walking away with $520,000 out of $525,000 settlement dollars — that’s 99 percent of the settlement. Fair? [Dayton Daily News]